CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - Patients with a normal body mass
index (BMI) can still have a high body fat content, which
increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, a Mayo Clinic
team announced here during the American College of Cardiology's
57th Annual Scientific Session.

Investigator Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez presented the
Rochester, Minnesota group's findings on so-called "normal
weight obesity" from a study of 2,127 subjects with a BMI in
the normal range. BMI is the ratio of weight to height, which
classifies people within a range from underweight to morbidly
obese.

The study participants' body composition was measured and a
full assessment was made of body size variables and
cardiovascular risk factors. Normal weight obesity was defined
as a body fat content higher than 20 percent for men and 30
percent for women.

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"Normal weight obesity appears to be highly prevalent,"
Lopez-Jimenez noted, "constituting more than half of the
patients with a normal weight as defined by the BMI." Of the
total 2,127 subjects in the study, 1,321 had normal weight
obesity, while 806 had a normal body fat content.

The investigators also found that 13.6 percent of the
normal weight obese individuals met the criteria for metabolic
syndrome compared with 5.3 percent of those who had a normal
weight without a high body fat content.

The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors for
cardiovascular disease, including high blood sugar, high levels
of the "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels, low
levels of the "good" HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure and
excess belly fat.

Specifically, significantly more of the normal weight obese
had a high waist circumference, elevated triglyceride levels,
elevated fasting blood sugar levels or a diagnosis of diabetes,
and other metabolic markers associated with an increased risk
of cardiovascular disease.

"Instead of tracking weight and BMI only, public health
measures to prevent heart disease might benefit more from
measuring the belly or by assessing percentage of body fat as
more reliable risk factors of heart disease," Lopez-Jimenez
concludes.